Tribute to LJUBOMIR MICIC, FOUNDER OF ZENIT
One hundred years ago, a young Serbian philosopher, writer, translator and admirer of beauty and art,born in Austro-Hungarian Empire 1895,, published the first issue of “Zenith” in 1921 in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in Zagreb. In his Manifesto of Zenitism, Ljubomir Micic is looking for a man and finds him in Barbarogeni who will refresh the previous art and artistic styles of Europe and take a new path. The founder of Zenit in his magazine presented views on art and beauty and new styles of art in the works of Malevich, Kandinsky, Lisitsky, Rodchenko, Archipenko, Tatlin and others. . The movement spread so strongly that it aroused great interest outside the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and Europe looks at that magazine and that movement with attention and respect. Micic admired the paintings of Malevich and Kandinsky and considered them the leaders of a new art that the world would accept. The magazine was published in Zagreb for a short time and Micic moved his editorial office to Belgrade, which did not look at him favorably, but on the contrary, as suspiciously as in Zagreb. He hoped to have the support of state institutions in Serbia, but that support was lacking. King Alexander, with his advisers for culture and art, does not accept him, and portrays him in public as a suspicious person who corrupts national relations in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia through his main character Barbarogeni.Micic leaves Belgrade, goes to Paris, where he spreads the ideas of zenithism in the City of Light with his brother Branko Ve Poljanski, who accepts and recognizes it. After many years spent outside Serbia, he returns to Belgrade with his Anuška, his wife and associate of the magazine “Zenit”, who remains faithful to him for the rest of his life. After her, he remains a suspect, misunderstood and rejected by the environment, to which Micic brought the most original movement that Serbia has, and that is zenithism. He died in a nursing home for the poor in Starčevo near Pancevo, without publication, without speeches and without texts of the intellectual elite of Serbia, in the seventies of the last century.As a lawyer, I was destined to be hired by two top collectors of Zenitism to defend them before the court in Belgrade when they answered the questions of the Chief Prosecutor of the Higher Prosecutor’s Office in Munich on the authenticity of Zenitism paintings that were auctioned at the Zisska and Laher Gallery. My first words in the courtroom were: “That this trial in Munich against the great connoisseurs of Zenitism Saronjic and Stojic was skillfully staged, that with this procedure, which is being conducted at the request of the German prosecution, my clients were slandered and their collection dishonored. It is incomprehensible that the German prosecutor is dealing with the authenticity of the Serbian painter Mihailо Petrov and is seeking criminal prosecution of my clients. Micic closed his circle of creativity with his death, alone, in a nursing home. The door of his Belgrade apartment, in which the real treasure of Zenitism remained, paintings by great painters of Zenitism, documentation, writings and records of Micic and his associates, remained closed for a long time. Since he had no heir, the state was informed to accept Micic’s inheritance, as the only heir to his work. The paintings from the auction in Munich were forcibly taken away from the auctioneers as if they were not authentic works of zenithism. With such a claim by the prosecutor, Šaronjić and Stojić gave a statement before the court and asked the judge if it was possible that even the dead Micic did not have peace. He has been persecuted all his life, and now his paintings are suspected of not belonging to him. For four years now, the German prosecutor has had no evidence that the acts of zenith were falsified, thus causing immeasurable damage to the authentic Serbian zenith movement and the paintings housed in the police depot, while I, as the defendant’s defense attorney, seek justice for Micic’s art from the successor state and the judge . Someone slandered the founder of Zenit, on the occasion of the centenary of the great jubilee of Zenitism, which belongs to Serbia and Micic. ”
defense counsel for defendants Sava Šaronjić and Nenad Stojić, Belgrade collectors of zenithism,
lawyer Veselin Cerović